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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23367655">Tutti, ad lib.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/diaryofageekgirl/pseuds/diaryofageekgirl'>diaryofageekgirl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bunker Fic, Classical Music, Gen, Jazz - Freeform, Lots of links, Music, author is a classical musician bitter about the lack of classical music representation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:06:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,670</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23367655</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/diaryofageekgirl/pseuds/diaryofageekgirl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tutti:<br/>[Italian, all together] A directive to perform the indicated passage of a composition with all instruments together. The opposite of solo.</p><p>ad lib.:<br/>Abbreviation of ad libitum [Latin, at liberty] At the discretion of the performer.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Tutti, ad lib.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/10838346">Symphony No. 1 in the Key of Sam Winchester</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/pseuds/kisahawklin">kisahawklin</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My second fic for Representation Week! Check out everyone else's works <a href="representation-week.tumblr.com">here</a>!<br/>Set in my favourite alternate universe, the one where everyone's alive and everything's fine. Also, I'm a sucker for bunker family.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For Kevin, it started with a community program.</p><p>When he was 7, his parents decided he should start taking some kind of music lessons. They had seen advertisements for the local Suzuki Strings program, and signed him up for it. He had grumbled at the time, as he would rather play video games than music. That changed when he heard the group’s instructor playing cello for the first time.</p><p>If he had to describe it, Kevin would say it was something like falling in love. The richness and warmth of sound the instrument created was like nothing he ever heard before, and he knew, then and there, that he would carry this with him for the rest of his life. Of course, when he started playing, it mostly sounded like screeches and blats, out of tune and with terrible tone. He didn’t care; what mattered was that he was playing. He knew he’d find that beauty for himself someday.</p><p>Years later, he found solace in his music. Whenever he needed a break from studying and assignments for his AP classes, he took up his cello and practiced. Kevin knew that his mom wanted him to be a doctor, and he’d go to medical school if that’s what she wanted, but he secretly wished he could study music even further. His fingers danced on the strings, the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GYWsjfjBws">Allemande</a> from Bach’s Cello Suite no. 5 in c minor pouring forth from his cello. Most people preferred the first <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGQLXRTl3Z0">Suite in G major</a>, but he preferred the darkness of the minor key suites.</p><p>His timer went off, reminding him to get back to studying. From there, Channing called, the two of them talking over – and freaking out about – college admission requirements.</p><p>Then, he became a prophet of the Lord, and his life was ruined.</p><p>Kevin was without his music for a while; the tablets took precedence, and when he didn’t really have a stable place to stay, he wouldn’t have been able to take his cello anyways. But when the Winchesters found the bunker, and had him move in, he went back and got his cello from home. Whenever he needed a break from translating, he would head back to his room and play – his current favourite was Handel’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8OI_e82MQ0">Cello Sonata in C major</a>; something about the cleanness and elegance of the Baroque just spoke to him. It helped him clear his mind, and gave him something to look forward too amongst the stress and headaches and utter insanity that was his life now.</p><p>One night, in the wee hours of the morning, Kevin decided to just bring his cello into the library where he was working, instead of running back and forth during a particularly tricky bit of translating. He sat, his fingers wringing Vivaldi’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4ZAOwsAVhs">Sonata in e minor</a> from his instrument, fighting off his exhaustion and frustration.</p><p>It was there that Sam found him.</p>
<hr/><p>For Sam, it started with a school trip.</p><p>It wasn’t common for elementary schools to take their classes on evening trips to see a symphony concert, but Sam was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time for it. The teachers packed up two school busses of overly-excited 4<sup>th</sup> and 5<sup>th</sup> graders, hauling them off to the concert hall for the performance of the Symphony Orchestra whose name Sam could no longer remember. Looking back, he was pretty sure the regular patrons of the symphony weren’t thrilled by the gaggle of noisy children, not trained in concert etiquette, but all he could remember of the night was the music.</p><p>He had grown up listen to his father’s, then Dean’s tapes, and while he had no hard feelings towards classic rock, it had absolutely nothing on hearing a live symphony orchestra performing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isic2Z2e2xs">The Planets</a>. Hearing the swooping strings, the regal brass, the woodwinds dancing elegantly above them all – Sam finally understood what it meant to be breathless. Most of the other kids complained later about having to sit still and be quiet, and who cares about a stupid orchestra, anyways?</p><p>But Sam loved it. He knew the school had a band program, as most did, and decided to sign up for it. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the money to pay for band fees, and he knew his dad would never agree to it if he asked. He wouldn’t be able to practice any instrument in the motel room, and he didn’t even have an instrument he could play. He also knew that they wouldn’t be staying here long; they never stayed anywhere long. Sure enough, Dad came home from his latest hunt a week later, and the three of them were off to the next town.</p><p>It was there that Sam realized that, even if he couldn’t play in a school band, just about every school had a piano.</p><p>Usually, they used it with the band, or for school plays and musicals, or for the glee club. They ranged from actually decent pianos, to old and horribly out of tune instruments, to plunky electric keyboards, and one particular school actually had a baby grand. The fine arts and music teachers at each school he went to were more than happy to lend him some books, and give him some basic lessons in reading music and in proper posture and form for the piano. He tried to give the books back when he could, but some ended up shoved in the bottom of his duffle, hastily thrown in when they had to leave town in a hurry. Sam was always quick at picking up new information, and that skill easily translated into a knack for sight reading. He also had a knack for playing by ear, which resulted in an afternoon of playing the best of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt8G3U-MABw">Billy Joel</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBWfUc5jKiM">Elton John</a>.</p><p>(Dean may have been stuck in the 70s, but Sam always preferred the 80s.)</p><p>When he first got to Stanford, his time was occupied with classes and studying and papers and the occasional bout of guilt and self-loathing for leaving, swiftly followed by spite, knowing that he made the right choice in attending school. His first year was devoid of music, excepting for what he happened to hear through his dorm walls. In the summer between his first and second years, he purchased a few music books from a store near campus, and after a quick stop at the Music Department’s administration desk, rented out a practice room for the next school year. He had it for two hours on Monday afternoon, and he would hide out there, intending to carefully pick his way through the entirety of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. In reality, he only ever learned the first <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KQW2YnCUrE">Prelude and Fugue in C major</a>, but he loved it anyways, so it didn’t really matter.</p><p>When he and Jess moved in together, they got an electronic keyboard for their apartment. Throughout the next year, Sam got really in to jazz – his height and size made his hands huge, which he was told was perfect for ragtime, which lead to him learning the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMAtL7n_-rc">Maple Leaf Rag</a>, and even going so far as to perform it as part of a variety night the Music Department was hosting.</p><p>He had been slowly but steadily learning Chopin’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5qeuVOIbHk&amp;t=78s">Nocturne no. 20 in c# minor</a> when Dean showed up.</p><p>He didn’t get another chance to play until nearly a decade later. He knew that Kevin played cello, but it wasn’t until he overheard him playing in the library one night that he was hit with the urge to sit down at a piano and play again. He and Kevin explored the bunker, stumbling upon what could only be called the music room. Sure, the Men of Letters were a secret society of supernatural scholars, but they were closer to an old boys club than a cult – it made perfect sense for them to have a room of fine musical instruments, old gramophones and records, and high quality scotch to enjoy alongside their personal entertainment.</p><p>Thankfully, the piano had some kind of magic on it to keep it in tune – Sam didn’t even want to think about what he would’ve had to say to a tuner, had he needed to hire one – and for the first time since college, he sat down on a piano bench. He brought his hands up, fingers hovering over the keys. A deep, shaky breath in and out, and the gentle melody of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvFH_6DNRCY">Clair de lune</a> filled the room.</p><p>It was there that Dean found them.</p>
<hr/><p>For Dean, it started with a girl.</p><p>For as long as he’d been alive, Dean had listened to and been enamoured with classic rock; the sounds of AC/DC, Metallica, Aerosmith, and Led Zeppelin had been the soundtrack of his childhood. They were rock stars, women wanted them and men wanted to be them. Dean himself was not immune to this dream. The thought of rocking out on a guitar in front of millions of screaming fans sounded like the greatest thing in the world to a 16-year-old living out of motels and surviving on too-little food with an obnoxious little brother to look after.</p><p>Of course, the too-little food ended up being an even bigger problem when he was caught stealing it and sent off to Sonny’s. He hated being away from his brother, but Sonny was a good man, and he got to meet Robin out of the whole ordeal, so hey – silver linings.</p><p>Robin sat him down one afternoon and gave him a basic guitar lesson – where to put his hands and fingers, a few basic chords, stuff like that. It didn’t come quickly to him, but he was thrilled when he got it right, and when he looked up in excitement, Robin was smiling widely back at him. He was able to learn enough to pluck out the first minute or so of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXQUu5Dti4g">Stairway to Heaven</a>, which he considered a massive success. He deeply enjoyed spending time with her, and if given the choice, would have stayed with her as long as he could, making music together, but then John came back with Sammy in tow, and, well. There wasn’t really any choice after that.</p><p>Dean didn’t find the time to really <em>learn </em>the guitar. He couldn’t afford distractions on hunts, and once he was off on his own, he didn’t give himself any down time, always moving forward to the next town and the next monster. Then John went missing, and Sammy came back, and everything went to shit and he forgot about it entirely.</p><p>Then, they found the bunker, and for the first time since he was four, Dean had a stable place of residence that actually belonged to him. He nested with a vengeance, making an underground bunker of concrete and steel into a proper goddamn home, making it his. He eventually stumbled on the music room, hearing plaintive sounds coming from the depths of the bunker and assuming that it was somehow haunted. He had burst into the room, gun at the ready, dressed only in an old Zeppelin t-shirt and novelty sushi pajama pants, dead guy robe flapping around him, only to come face to face with Kevin and Sam playing a duet together on their respective instruments.</p><p>(Sam and Kevin still give him shit for that, but considering the life that they lead, he feels pretty fucking defensive about the possibility of ghosts somewhere in the bunker.)</p><p>A few weeks later, he and Sam are finishing up a hunt in a small town a few hours away, when they pass by a giant community garage sale. They stock up on new-old clothes, Sam grabs a few books, and Dean’s eye is caught by a beautiful classical guitar. He stares, fingers just catching on the strings, wavering. He knows it’s not something they need…but maybe it’s something <em>he </em>needs. He meets Sam back at the car; his brother raises an eyebrow at the instrument, leveling Dean with an equal parts curious and demanding gaze, but says nothing.</p><p>Dean finds his time in the music room in the middle of the afternoon, when Kevin and Sam are both sure to be in the library. He carefully plucks his way along the strings, remembering the feeling of the instrument in his hands. He finds a book of classical guitar music, and maybe it’s not classic rock, but maybe Dean likes more than one genre of music, and maybe it’s about time he stopped pretending that that’s not the case.</p><p>He immediately hits a roadblock, as he learned guitar by sight and sound, not by musical notation, and he can’t read anything on the page. Knowing Sam would never let him live it down, he later finds Kevin alone, and awkwardly asks-slash-demands he teaches him to read music. It takes a while, and Dean gets so frustrated he nearly smashes the guitar, but he learns it. He stumblingly makes his way through Fernando Sor’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u01EHowM6cA">Fantasia in A</a>, growing more confident and competent as he goes. A couple of months later, he joins Sam and Kevin in one of their late night music sessions, and while they debate back and forth the merits of the Baroque versus the Romantic eras, Dean sits, quietly playing Giuliani’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4esey6TqNw">Gran Sonata Eroica</a>.</p><p>It was there that Charlie found them.</p>
<hr/><p>For Charlie, it started with a gift.</p><p>Or at least, as much as a hand-me-down from an uncle can be a gift. He had an old flute that he never played, and since Charlie was entering fifth grade, about to start band, her mother had taken it, saying that she’d make good use of it. She loved playing in her elementary school band, and she quickly outpaced all of her classmates. Once she entered high school, she started taking private lessons.</p><p>She loved the flute; the crystal-bright tone, the twittering and fluttering of fast passages, the way she could play a double-octave C and shut someone up when they were annoying her. Charlie’s teachers always found beautiful music for her to play, Vivaldi and C.P.E Bach, Chaminade and Mozart. She enjoyed all of it, but none of it truly spoke to her. Once she graduated and went to college, the flute fell by the wayside as classes became her entire world for a while. Even once she dropped out, she threw herself into her job and her nerdier passions rather than music.</p><p>When she helped stop Dick Roman, she had to move town, make a new alias, get a new job; she was digging through her storage locker on the outskirts of town when her old flute literally fell back in her lap, tucked safely in its case. She picked it up, considering. If she was starting over fresh again, maybe it was time to start some other things over as well. Once she got settled in her new apartment, she pulled her flute out again. Even after more than a decade, her fingers still sat perfectly on the keys, her lips and mouth still formed a perfect embouchure. (Her breath control was another story, but she could build that back up, no problem.)</p><p>She decided to go digging for some new music, looking up what the internet considered the most popular and famous flute music. It was there that she finally found something that struck a chord with her. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLQn4OmZ7k8&amp;t=61s">Icicle</a> was cool, but god it was hard to play and even harder to read the score, but she finally figured out that <em>this </em>is how the flute should be played, taken to its full potential and pushing past it. From there, Charlie discovered Ian Clarke, his compositions a beautiful blend of classical training and modern twists and turns. She immediately purchased <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPQtK3lZPVw">Hypnosis</a>, and spent a couple of months practicing. The double octave D wasn’t too tricky, but the 21-note ossia was a nightmare.</p><p>She found delight in modern and 20<sup>th</sup>-century music, anything that pushed the boundaries of classical music. She had been working on a beautiful Canadian piece, <a href="http://1443.sydneyplus.com/final/Portal/Music-Library.aspx?component=AF-ML-Query-AS&amp;record=0302a114-012b-4fc4-be34-1fc48d49b66c">Conversations</a>, when she encountered the Winchesters again at Moondoor. She both loved and hated seeing them again, but she got to win the Battle of Five Kingdoms and make out with a fairy, so she wouldn’t complain too much. They kept in touch, and when they told her about their secret magic underground bunker, she immediately asked if she could move in with them.</p><p>Shortly after moving in with the Bunker Family, Charlie stumbled upon their impromptu music night tradition, and gleefully joined in. She and Dean jammed their way through <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6WCLOQVbuA">Curried Soul</a>, and she shrieked in absolute <em>delight </em>when she discovered that the Men of Letters had a bass flute stashed amongst their instruments. She immediately began looking for music, and stumbled on a beautifully haunting piece called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn1e3maS8Ug">Ice Maiden</a>. She demanded Sam learn the piano part so he could accompany her, and took to learning it with a vengeance. She found it was harder to play the bass flute, due to the sheer amount of air required, but she forced her way through it and adored every second of it. (Next on her list was to learn <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObUREzucuW8">fluteboxing</a>.)</p><p>It was there that Benny found them.</p>
<hr/><p>For Benny, it started with the restaurant.</p><p>Guidry’s Cajun Café was Benny’s favourite place in the world in his first life; the smell of good ol’ southern food, the bustle and conversation of fascinating people, and most of all, the radio playing on the corner of the counter, filling the space with music and joy. Being only a couple hours’ drive from New Orleans, they always got the hottest jazz charts hot off the press and pumping through the radio’s speakers.</p><p>Benny loved jazz from the moment he heard it – the upbeat rhythms, the orderly chaos of improvisation, the sheer joy and power that they put into their horns. It was hard not to love it. He put aside a bit of his paycheck each week, and after a couple of months, saved up enough to buy a horn of his own. A used Conn 10M tenor saxophone, its tone warm and rich like Hawk, or bright and brassy like Bird’s alto, he loved playing it whenever he got the chance.</p><p>A jazz hall popped up not far from the Café, and on amateur Wednesday nights, Benny got up on stage with a bunch of lovers of swing and bop, and played a set or two. His favourite at the time was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niDdvJimRWI">Stardust</a>, even though he couldn’t hope to imitate Hawkins’ warm, breathy sound. The crowd usually requested a number of charts as well, and that night he played through <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja1kIyW0mOE">Lester Leaps In</a> for the first time. He stepped off the stage, sweating from the stage lights, panting from the exertion, and feeling more alive than he ever had before.</p><p>Once he was turned, Benny stopped playing. The Old Man wouldn’t allow any petty, mortal distractions, and he was killed not long after that anyways. Purgatory was terrible in many ways, but the lack of music, the utter lack of sound in general, had to be the worst. He would whistle to himself to stay sane, usually Grieg, Andrea’s favourite, but Sonny Rollins’ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5szzdKIktJU">Round Midnight</a> sometimes snuck its way in there.</p><p>Returning to life had been a disorienting process; 50 years had passed since he died, and everything from technology to pop culture to food was wildly different than he remembered. The first few months on his own had been rough, but eventually Dean had worked things out with his brother and invited him to live with them. He hadn’t particularly been expecting an underground bunker full of magical artifacts and ancient tomes, but Dean was always full of surprises.</p><p>Once he found out about their music nights, Benny hunted down a tenor saxophone and joined them. He was thrilled to play again, and relieved he was able too – he had been worried his fangs would get in the way, and was incredibly glad he hadn’t picked up a trumpet all those years ago. He immediately played<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krDxhnaKD7Q"> the lick</a>, sending Dean and Charlie into hysterics. He adamantly stated that they needed more jazz in their jam session, and unless he was mistaken, he and Sam finally reached an understanding as they played <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsAMAIaas94">Ornithology</a> together.</p><p>It was there that Claire found them.</p>
<hr/><p>For Claire, it started with church.</p><p>She came from a religious family, and from as far back as she could remember, she grew up singing hymns and church choir songs and religious carols. Other kids would sometimes play at Sunday services, and her dad told her that she could too, if she wanted.</p><p>However, her music came from a different church.</p><p>Rather than the United Church that her family usually attended, Claire first fell in love with music at a Lutheran church on the far side of town. She was 6 years old, it was two days before Christmas, the snow was drifting lazily down, and a local string quartet was performing the Four Seasons. From that moment on, she was entranced. As she and her parents left the church after the performance, she loudly declared that she was going to play that someday. Her parents laughed brightly at her enthusiasm, and when the next school year started, Claire was signed up for violin lessons.</p><p>For all her enthusiasm about playing the violin, she hated practicing it. It was frustrating, the sounds coming from the instruments screechy and grating, struggling to find where her fingers were supposed to go on the strings. There were a couple of times she nearly gave up, but her dad coaxed her into giving it another go. Slowly but steadily, she made progress with it, and eventually stopped hating practicing. She still hated the Kreutzer studies, though.</p><p>(She relays this to Sam later, who just laughs and offers to trade, holding out his Pischna book. She looks inside and shudders, forcing it back into his hands.)</p><p>She played for her church every now and again, and also performed and competed at the local music festival for several years. She usually played Vivaldi and Bach, enjoying the elegance and precision of the Baroque style.</p><p>Then, her dad left. Then, her dad came back. Then, an angel appeared before her, asking her to let it in and she said yes. Then, her normal life ended.</p><p>When she and her mother left, Claire only took two bags with her. One was her suitcase, filled with clothes and a few books. The other was her violin case. Her mother said she wouldn’t need it, it would be better to leave it behind, but Claire was stubborn. Her mother gave in, not having the energy to fight with her. While they stayed with her grandmother, Claire spent most of her days indoors. She didn’t want to make any new friends in town, she didn’t want to talk to anyone, and she had already read all of her books several times over. So, she practiced. She no longer cared for the simplicity and cleanliness of the Baroque; instead, she fell into the Romantic era, full of passion and intensity and <em>sturm und drang</em>. She poured every drop of rage and grief and heartache into her violin, hoping that maybe it would bleed from it instead of her. She performed an almost violent interpretation of Monti’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTc-KoBAKts">Czardas</a> in her room for an audience of no-one, and actually felt a little better for it.</p><p>(Of course, this was at two in the morning, and her mother came and yelled at her for it, but it was so worth it.)</p><p>Then, Claire’s mother left. Then, Claire’s grandmother died. Then, Claire’s mother died. Then, she was alone, and that was when Randy found her.</p><p>When she lived with Randy, she felt empty; the rage and grief that she had felt for her dad for so long had turned into a cold pit inside her that now had room for both of her parents. She didn’t have a violin at the time, but even if she did, she wouldn’t have played it. Once Randy was gone and the Winchesters set her up with Jody, she was resistant to the warmth that was being offered to her. She had lost her home before, lost her family before, and she wouldn’t let down her guard enough to lose it again.</p><p>After a couple of weeks of her resistance to Jody and Alex’s open arms, Jody asked her if there was something she could do to make her feel more at home. Claire bit her lip, sheepishly asking for a favour, and two days later, a beautiful new violin and case sat on her bed. It gave her a reason to be home more often than not, and she spent the next couple of months working on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNbaxSW9eWc">third movement</a> of Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy. It was like a balm to her weary soul to play something so hopeful sounding, lacking all of the heaviness and anger that had consumed her for so long. Alex also suggested a few pieces to her, and while most weren’t all that appealing, she did decide to take a look at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK3jRo6aTbQ">Butterfly Lovers Concerto</a>.</p><p>(It was beautiful, but good God, it was hard. It would take forever to learn, but Claire was determined to do it.)</p><p>Claire visited the bunker, during what she jokingly referred to as her once-a-month split custody visit, when she found the usual denizens clustered in the music room, playing and laughing and singing. She slipped in without them noticing and hovered near the wall. Charlie was the first to notice her, and invited her to join them. Claire hadn’t brought her violin with her, not expecting to play it. The next time she visited, she had her violin case in one hand and a music book in the other, and that night she fulfilled a promise to her 6-year-old self, and performed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2XM1EMzaWs">Vivaldi’s Four Seasons</a> to an adoring audience.</p>
<hr/><p>For the bunker, it started with Kevin.</p><p>From there, the others followed, bringing their own music with them, eager to share in the sheer joy of making music together. Everyone played their own instruments on their own most days, and at least once a week, they all got together and played. There was plenty of classical music, a fair share of jazz, and a ban on Dean from playing any rock in the music room. They played whatever they had been working on privately, they jammed and improvised together, and they occasionally partook in the time-honoured musician tradition of swapping instruments around and failing miserably at playing them.</p><p>Cas joined them most nights, despite not being able to play any instruments. Partially, it was to give them an audience to play for, but mostly, he enjoyed the way the sound waves resonated, weaving in and out of his grace; it was almost like being connected to the Host again. Sometimes, he would hum or sing along with whatever they were playing, his rich baritone voice resonating in the room.</p><p>Every now and again, they’d have friends visiting the bunker join them in the music room, usually Jody and Donna and the rest of the girls. They usually ended up swapping out with either Sam or Dean with the piano or guitar, as those instruments were the most likely that they had had previous experience with. These nights usually ended with goofy campfire songs, and someone attempting to play Pachelbel’s Canon in D that ended with Kevin giving them a death glare until they stopped. There had been one memorable night when Balthazar had dropped in apropos of nothing, listened along with Cas for about half an hour, then pulled a double bass out of thin air and performed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lDW4HNCync">a delightful little French tune</a>, before disappearing. None of them quite knew what to make of that.</p><p>Family music night had started completely as an accident, but ended up becoming the most important tradition in the bunker.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This fic is a labour of my love. I've been involved with music in some capacity since I was three years old, from a Music in Early Childhood program, to private music lessons, to school concert and jazz bands, to performing in music festivals, to taking music and theory exams, to doing jazz gigs, to playing in community groups, to getting my B.Mus at university, to my current job, which is teaching private violin and cello lessons.</p><p>Often, when a character is described as being a music lover, it usually ends up applying to rock or pop music, and usually only a tiny sub-genre within that genre (looking at you, Dean). The history of classical music stretches back hundreds of years, with some truly incredible artistry, and to ignore that or treat is as not worthy of that sort of love is, quite frankly, insane. On the rare occasion that you do get a character that is a classically trained musician, they're usually played by an actor who isn't, so you either don't get to see them actually play their instrument, or you do and wish that you didn't with how inaccurate it is.</p><p>Enter Kevin Tran. He might be the one and only character from a series that I've watched that is 100% believable as a classically trained musician. In his introduction scene, when he's practicing cello, he's playing a piece from the Bach cello suites; any sufficiently advanced cello student can attest to the accuracy of Kevin learning those, as pretty much every cello student will learn at least some of the cello suites. However, he isn't playing the Prelude from the first Suite in G major - you know, the one that everyone knows - but instead, the Allemande from the fifth Suite in c minor. That <em>immediately</em> convinced me that he's a real cello player.</p><p>All the instruments the characters in this fic play are instruments that I play myself, with the exception of Dean, but him playing guitar is kinda-sorta canon, so I left it as is. In addition, all of the flute, cello, and violin pieces present are pieces that I've performed myself. (for the sake of reference, the movements of Conversations, in order, are Greetings, Small Talk, Gossip, Quarrel, Reconciliation, and Farewell).</p><p>I also had each character represent a different era of classical music: Kevin is Baroque, Dean is Classical, Claire is Romantic, Charlie is 20th Century, Benny is Jazz, and Sam just can't be confined to one genre ;)</p><p>I hope all the links work, and I hope you all enjoy this music as much as I do.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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